Tibby's restaurant was full, as usual, with the regulars. As Lucy approached the familiar building she watched inside as the boys all sat around the same tables they usually took over. It somewhat resembled the mess hall back at the orphanage, and she instantly thought of Ginger and Tick. It was the first time she truly missed them, for they had been the family she had while she was there. She looked down and could only hope they were both okay. But she looked up into the window again and felt better, for this was her new family.

"Sully!" the table shouted in broken unison as Lucy entered the restaurant and the bell rang above the door.

She smiled and waved as she made her way to the table. They rearranged the chairs to make room, pulling her in invitingly the way members of a family would when they had not seen each other in a while yet it was as if being separated never really mattered. The waiter brought her a water right away -- it was even at the point at which Lucy did not need a menu anymore. She rattled off her order as well as she could rattle off her own name.

"Feelin' bettah kid?" asked Racetrack. He swiftly brought the back of his hand to her forehead and brought it back down again, tossing her a cigar from the inside of his jacket. "Heah, have one 'a these, they're good for ya."

Lucy laughed to herself and set the cigar down onto the table subtly so he would not be offended. They were starting to play another card game that required earnest concentration with Race as the dealer, as per usual. Lucy sipped on her drink to watch intently. Skittery sat across the table, Race and Blink to her right, with Mush to her left. Others -- Boots, Crutchy, Bumlets -- crowded around, peering over one another's shoulder to look at the different hands.

The bell rang above the door again. Jack and David walked inside but they seemed to be in deep conversation, too deep to hardly notice the round of deafening and borderline obnoxious greetings from the table of brothers. David waved to them but went right back to listening to Jack, who talked nonstop since they set foot inside.

Hm…Lucy thought to herself. She looked at the table of boys who concentrated heavily again on the card game. Silently she slipped out of her chair, taking her water with her, and plopped down into the booth where Jack and David sat. It must have been a really deep talk -- David hardly noticed when she chose to sit next to him.

"…I'm gonna lose it, I swear," finished Jack, his eyes alive with raw emotion.

"No, no, you're not," David shook his head in a calm yet stern voice, a voice Lucy had never heard from him before now. "You're not going to make this any bigger than it needs to be. This is just Spot with a God complex…"

Lucy's eyes flickered to their conversation excitedly.

"…This is just him not wanting to let go of his reputation as the biggest newsies in New York. You had to have seen this comin', Jack, honestly."

"I did, it's just…" Jack sat back in restrained frustration. "I was so close to bein' rid 'a this. But it's this kinda shit that keeps holdin' me back 'cause I gotta take care of it."

"I know. I know." David nodded his head and looked down at his menu.

Lucy took a gulp of her drink and the ice cubes clinked noisily in the absence of their conversation. David looked to his left instantly at the sound.

"Hey! Sorry about that," he said. "Hi."

Lucy smiled forgivingly.

"Hey Luce," said Jack flatly with his face down reading the menu.

"How's everything goin'? Any better?" She directed her question more towards Jack as he seemed to have much more response to the current situation.

"Fine."

"Okay, then," Lucy backed off. She looked at David from the corners of her eyes and he shook his head suggesting that she drop the subject. Lucy nodded in response. Instead, she began whimsically, "Jack, Molly almost kicked me outta the shop today."

Jack laughed, distracted. "Really, what'd ya do this time?"

"I may have…almost…trimmed the seams of a sleeve so that they fell off the dress entirely…" Actually, Lucy had done no such thing. In fact, it was a rather successful work day, and Molly had hardly spoken a word to her. She did not come close to trimming the sleeves off some dress; rather, she mended the most expensive garment of the week in an impressive amount of time that should have warranted a pat on the back from Molly. Yet Jack had pointed out before how he thought it was funny how Molly supposedly embarrassed her at times and she would try to hide her embarrassment in telling the story to everyone else. It was a lie, yes, but when Jack laughed and got out of his irritable mood, Lucy felt not the least bit guilty.

And it had done quite the trick. The lie led into a discussion of several other mishaps on the job between the three of them. Jack told the story of how David was practically thrown out from being a newsie for nearly accusing the distribution operator of cutting him short a single newspaper. Lucy laughed along with Jack while David tried to subtly hide his face in his hands.

"Nothin' beats bein' a newsie, right Dave?" Jack leaned across the table and smacked him across the head in a fraternal bonding sort of way.

"Yeah, yeah…" replied David as if to say, Haven't I heard this all before?

"What d'you mean?" asked Lucy.

"Dave here's goin' back to school next week. No more sellin' papes with the rest 'a the boys."

"I'll still stop by here and by the distribution after classes, though," offered David.

"Are you really goin' back? That's great," encouraged Lucy.

David looked at her with a pleasantly surprised look. "Thanks…You think so?"

"Yeah. Well, one of us has gotta move up in the world…"

"Got a point. Not all of us can be gang leaders the rest of our lives like Spot Conlon, right? We can't all be ambitious!" said Jack in a very dark and sarcastic way that masked his true feelings on the subject. It was as though the previous lighthearted conversation was merely a padding for when he cracked again.

Lucy shook her head. "Okay, what is goin' on? It's startin' to confuse me, I'd really just wanna know what you're talkin' about…"

David and Jack looked at each other a moment.

"Or not, if it's some top-secret newsies business…"

"It ain't that. No. Basically one 'a the gangs up heah's been havin' some problems with Spot's boys and when we heard about it, we thought it'd be a good idea to talk to Spot hisself, ya know? So we did, and it turns out Spot's boys and this Manhattan groups' been on the outs since the beginning of the summer. Nothin' too serious, they even stopped fightin' in order to help the strike, but after that's done they picked up again. So we talk to 'im, see if we can work somethin' out, 'cause if it's in Manhattan it still affects us, ya know, we're the barrier between this gang and Brooklyn --"

"The gang's actually a few blocks near your place," interrupted David to Lucy.

Lucy felt a pang. So that was why she encountered Spot near that restaurant and felt such a strong presence when she tried looking for him. It was not fate. It was, as Spot routinely said, just "business."

"--Spot ain't havin' that, though, he ain't willin' to listen to us. So we'se been goin' back an' forth between the two and Spot's just been a real son of a bitch about it," finished Jack.

"He just wants to keep it all going so he can tally up another fight he's won. He knows it involves us in one way or another but he just doesn't care," added David. "He doesn't want Jack's name attached to it is all."

Lucy nodded. It was so strange to her, suddenly, that she was reminded of just who Spot Conlon was. In the past couple of days she had forgotten that he was the leader of the newsies and he still had to deal with problems such as this. He had the same job as Jack and David. He was still the leader over there across the river. It was a weird reminder of who she had been fooling around with, and a biting reminder of how Jack never wanted the two of them to ever meet.

"He's on a power trip. Now that you've got your name all over the strike, people don't automatically think of him when they think of the best gangs and newsies, they think of Manhattan for a change," elaborated David. "You know he can't be dealing with that too well…"

Lucy felt her stomach flip-flop. Keeping her secret to herself and her outward emotions in check, she imagined Spot possessing that need to command, to be in charge, to take control. She smirked to herself for she understood how David would think that, and it was like she knew Spot Conlon on a particular level that nobody else really did.

Toning down the mood at the table, the waiter brought around their food. Lucy was still in blissful, secretive wonder, looking the way someone would if they had a delicious bit of gossip about to explode from inside them. A few pieces of her hair fell in front of her face and she readily tucked them behind her ear, clearing her throat and calming herself down. She took a bite of her sandwich and oh, how good it tasted.

David's face looked up into the evening sky as he walked Lucy back to her apartment that night. Lucy strolled at his side twirling hair around her finger. It was a fairly clear night, not at all like the weather the city had seen days before with torrential downpours. There were stars tonight. Lots of them. And as David and Lucy walked, there again was a comfortable silence between them, as if they could exist in their own worlds together without being anxious of the other's presence. It was quite comfortable.

"It's pretty nice out," said David.

"Hm?" Lucy floated back down to Earth. "Oh, yeah. It's a really pretty night. I still enjoy the rain, though."

David laughed. "Yeah."

A minute passed before either of them said anything, until David shifted the silence and said, "I can't count on being out too late that often anymore."

"Well, ya need your school, of course."

"I guess…"

"Think of it this way: you're not doomed to be a street rat like the rest of us," laughed Lucy darkly. "Society will actually look proud on you and you won't ever have to worry about bein' sent to the refuge."

"Yeah, well…I never looked down on you guys. At least not anymore, I admit I did at first. But definitely not anymore. How could I? What a horrible thing to do."

Lucy looked to David's profile and he alternated gazing up at the black canvas of the night sky and down at the ground. There was a genuinely disheartened spirit about him. His hands were in his pockets and he kicked stones lazily as he walked. He knew he was leaving a place he called home. Perhaps not for good, but still for a little while. Lucy studied him further: his face was the most serious -- the most real -- she had ever seen. And everything about David Jacobs, in that moment when she looked at him, was sincere.

She linked her arm in his, for at that time she did not think it would send the wrong signal. There was closeness and respect between them. The evening had shifted ever so lightly her perception of him. "We'll miss ya, Dave. But you could never leave, really, you'll always be one of us."

David laughed, slightly touched. "It's funny how it only took one afternoon for you to be considered 'one of us.'"

"I've got connections," she joked.

"Ha-ha, I gues. Not that I don't agree you're one of us, it's just funny how people feel like they've always been there."

She rested her head on his arm. "Yes. I know what ya mean."

That moment Lucy shared with David was rather significant and she knew this on level she did not admit to herself. David was going to school, and things were going to change for him and the newsies and, consequently, for her as well. She was part of the Manhattan family. Anything one of them did affected the whole clan. This was what Lucy did not want to reveal to herself. She did not want to face that reality just yet. But there is still the idea that steadfastly remained, that applied to the newsies, to the Jacobs, and to Lucy, that blood is thicker than water. No matter how much the tide changed and washed everything away, there would always be something stronger to defeat the water, the element of change, no matter how much rain Lucy could enjoy.

A/N: Still getting more interesting...I hope...haha.